Coolio. I have been awarded a thingummy by two nice peeps...PEEP ONE HERE and PEEP TWO HERE. Thank you!!!

It comes with conditions...
You have to link to those who nominated you. You have to list seven things you love. And pass it on to seven blogs you love. Well, see, that’s using the word ‘love’ wrongly. I like and enjoy blogs, but I don’t ‘love’ them, I’m afraid!!


Hmm. Things I love.

1) All my family.
2) The scent of the air after rain. Go outside as the rain stops. Shut your eyes and breathe in slowly… nothing like it.
3) The sensation of being suspended in water. (I enjoy swimming, but it is the feeling of water round me that I love. Iris Murdoch loved it too. Maybe I’m going the same way as Iris…)
4) Meeting new thoughts, ideas, being challenged. Learning something new.
5) My means of writing whether paper and pencil, pens, computer and keyboard. I do not love my computer otherwise.
6) Solitude. I enjoy my own company, time to reflect, think, not think. Just ‘be’. I love going to Anam Cara Writers’ and Artist’s Retreat, seeking just that. The joy is that you can also dip your toes into good company and withdraw when it suits.
7) Reading a short story that is so good, so resonant, that I disappear totally into the fictive world for the duration of the story, am carried along in the current then thrown back into my world, gasping. No novel can do this. There’s a challenge… if you know better…

And I have to send the award to others.

But the blogs I enjoy have probably already got the award… hey. I don’t care! I award this to you lot for the enjoyment you give me, for educating me, for making me smile, for your honesty and for putting life into perspective.

Willesden Herald
Normblog
Sara Crowley
Sarah Salway
Tania Hershman
Literary Rejections on Display
Nik Perring

LITERARY REJECTIONS ON DISPLAY and THE REJECTER

In line with my 'Ya win some ya lose some' philosophy, I always suggest writers keep up to date with what is REALLY going on in the world of writing and subbing.

The blog Literary Rejects on Display is great. Linked on the right, it is seriously useful place to go for a reality check.

Listen to loads of writers out there, and you find the writing world is peopled by beings who worked as plumbers, brain surgeons, chicken-sexers, architects, dustmen, and woke up one morning to a scatter of oofle dust from an open window...
and

paf!

they were a writer! Wheeeeeeeeeeee. None of those awful learning processes for them... just sat down, scribbled a bit, met an agent in the street doing up his shoelace, bumped into a commissioning editor for Pan Macmillan by the bread rolls in Tescos.

Multi million advance and ten book deal by tea time.

Easy!

(The real scene is on display at LWOD, some fascinating discussions. And the occasional bit of 'here's a book, and here's how I got it out there despite the rejects. I'm on today.)

-------------------------

And, in the interests of balance in all things (without which the world might spin off its axis) I have also found a blog called The Rejecter.

THE REJECTER BLOG

This has some incredibly interesting posts, again, very straight. Written by an assistant literary agent in a New York Lit agency.

I can't say I agree with all she/he says about small presses though. Obviously agents don't like them; they don't earn ££/moolah/widgets from small presses, as typically no advances are paid. But she/he states that no small presses have any distribution clout.

And my lovely Salt Publishing has books out there in Borders, Waterstones, Blackwells... all over. They nominate their writers for prizes. They get invited to take part in festivals, panels. Those invitations sometimes filter to the writers.

Great stuff.

But do check out both blogs... a little balance in all things.

FUN WITH REJECTIONS

I was blessed by an editor as he rejected a story this week.

Dear Vanessa

Thanks for the submission, we've decided to pass on its publication. This is no reflection on your talent as a writer. It just doesn't fit our current publication needs.

Blessings and thanks,

I thought that was rather pleasant. I felt blessed and things. Then looked up the sub to cross it out, and lo...t'was sent in August 2007. Ten months? Isn't that a wee bit long for a short story submission? Unpaying too...

Then I went and read one of my favourite blogs, Literary Rejections on Display. (Although ironically, even he rejected me... having asked for answers to some questions, that was the end of that, they never appeared on the blog, and no reply to a query...... but it's still a good honest blog. Only no one says who they are. Well, apart from a few idiots, like me!)

Anyway. I read about a sumbmission to somewhere called Salamander... sent in November 2006 and rejected recently, with the standard line does not fit our requirements at this time. The writer wrote back to ask whether the time referred to was 2006 or 2008!

Love that.
LITERARY REJECTIONS ON DISPLAY HERE